Archive: Mexico

Translator's Note:

The unspoken cliché that writing should reflect the world in accurate language unveils itself provocatively in Mexican poet Jorge Fernández Granados’s poem “Principle of Uncertainty.” Its speaker posits that to perceive something like truth in “unreliable hiding-in-plain-sight / reality” you have to witness, and do your best, because “(the closest) proximity or (furthest) / distance are the error / from which we love or judge.”

Another unspoken cliché that the collection Principio de incertidumbre (2007) voices aloud is that poetry can speak the world at all, since writing ultimately is a translation of experience. Principio, Granados’s seventh book, whose title I translate literally as “Principle of Uncertainty,” wishes to suggest that this is not a treatise on Heisenberg, but rather an experiment with how his principle might work in poetry. Thus, we read the “hurried notes” of an observer faced with the uncertainty of knowing anything precisely. And knowingly, Fernández Granados’s free verse of mostly unpunctuated lines that wobble between phrases and across line breaks expresses uncertainty, but in ways that lead the reader into surprising detours and notable arrivals.

In a seeming contradiction to the preceding, a matter of punctuation appears in the ars poetica, “F(l)echas en la noche / D(a)rt(e)s in the Night,” which underscores the poet’s denial that he can write at all, even while he writes. A parenthesis as lexical item opens a window for the use of the same variable in English translation: F(l)echas – fechas” almost mirror each other, as do “Da(r)tes – dates,” with the minor enormity of the lazy “e” in “dartes,” hence “da(r)t(e)s,” a manuever almost compensating for the size differential between “flechas” (“arrows”) and “darts.” I have calculated that adding an additional “( )” to bound the “e” could be an intelligible, even an aesthetic choice, though I recognize it is a kind of error.
The real issue comes into focus in the variously stated refrain “no podría escribir” / “I could not write,” the resulting clause of a statement contrary to fact: “As if there were in words something able /to translate it.” The world, that is, and I couldn’t, says the poet. But the implied meaning of such “if” statements is present tense, in other words, the poet “can’t write,” he can only “transcribe / excavate” what the lyric says in the end: “in the difficult words that are nothing / surely but inseparable shadows hard / ruins teeth or darts in the night / that project things / the singular things of this world…” all clarified in the light of another morning. Even though the meaning of the refrain changes in the course of the poem, I (am bound to) render it as written grammatically, and all the while know that its meaning is variable, uncertain, and significant. Though I have done my best, I am not able to translate it, I can only approximate it.

Translator's Note:

Marco Aurelio Ángel-Lara (Mexico, 1970) is a Mexican writer whose book of aphorisms, El atril de la luciérnaga, was published in 2011 by Arlequín. Marco has been anthologized in collections of Hispanoamerican poetry and awarded with poetry, essay, and short script international prizes. He obtained a Ph.D. in Critical and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. He has taught philosophy and Latin American literature for several years at different universities in Mexico and Europe.

Translator's Note:

Tedi López Mills was born in Mexico City in 1959. She studied philosophy at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and literature at the Sorbonne. She has published ten books of poetry, several of which have received national prizes in Mexico: Cinco estaciones, Un lugar ajeno, Segunda persona (Premio Nacional de Poesía Efraín Huerta), Glosas, Horas, Luz por aire y agua, Un jardín, cinco noches (y otros poemas), Contracorriente (Premio Nacional de Literatura José Fuentes Mares), Parafrasear, and Muerte en la rúa Augusta (Premio Xavier Villaurrutia). Her other honors include a 1994 Young Artists grant from the Fondo Nacional para las Culturas y las Artes, a 1995 translation fellowship from the U.S./Mexico Fund for Culture, and, in 1998, the prestigious inaugural poetry grant awarded by the Octavio Paz Foundation. She has translated into Spanish the work of numerous American, English, and French poets and, very recently, Anne Carsons’s Autobiography of Red. A selection of her poems, While Light is Built, translated by Wendy Burk, was published by Kore Press. López Mills has been a member of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores since 2009.

Translator's Note:

The Word Exchange: U.S./Mexico Playwright Exchange Program was created by the Lark Play Development Center in collaboration with Mexico’s Fund for Culture and Arts (FONCA). The Lark annually hosts playwrights from Mexico and pairs them with American playwrights for a ten-day translation and development residency designed to create stage-worthy translations of new works from Mexico; it also introduces the writers to New York’s theater scene, industry leaders, and the Lark community. Public readings of these works are presented each November, followed by a closing night Celebración. In 2009, the Lark launched a reciprocal program where U.S. writers develop Spanish translations of their work with artists in Mexico City.

The Sadness of the Limes is the story of Rite Pool, a bitter formerly successful comedian, who is now tired and depressed from a life that isn’t funny anymore. He spends his life talking to parking meters and thinks repeatedly about quitting comedy, but an unexpected encounter with his former sidekick, the happy innocent Izzy Dedley, makes him think that there is still hope on a laughing track. The comic duo plan a comeback at their favorite gig joint, the Three Trapped Tigers, but Rite Pool’s own legs run away from him and decide to steal the show.

Translator's Note:

The Word Exchange: U.S./Mexico Playwright Exchange Program was created by the Lark Play Development Center in collaboration with Mexico’s Fund for Culture and Arts (FONCA). The Lark annually hosts playwrights from Mexico and pairs them with American playwrights for a ten-day translation and development residency designed to create stage-worthy translations of new works from Mexico; it also introduces the writers to New York’s theater scene, industry leaders, and the Lark community. Public readings of these works are presented each November, followed by a closing night Celebración. In 2009, the Lark launched a reciprocal program where U.S. writers develop Spanish translations of their work with artists in Mexico City.

A poetic, chaotic, and moving tale of evolution and adaptation in the modern world, Events with Life’s Leftovers follows the residents of an apartment building as they celebrate insomnia, and life’s beginnings and endings.

Submissions

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